


Why We Make A Good You And Me

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Banter, Beginnings, Chilly Mornings, Cinnamon Lip Balm, First Kiss, Hurt!Michael, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, James Being A Good Friend, Love Confessions, M/M, Michael Being Clumsy, protective!James
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James/Michael hurt/comfort fluff. Involves hurt!Michael and protective!James and first kisses and suggestions of top!James for later on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why We Make A Good You And Me

**Author's Note:**

> Very belated birthday fic for shayzgirl! Title from the Plain White T’s “You And Me”, this time.

It’s an icy morning, and an early one. The world hung with dewdrops like crystal. The air brittle, and cool, and sharp, when Michael breathes it in.

He _has_ always liked cold mornings. There’s something vivid about the chill. Refreshing. Brisk.

James doesn’t like cold mornings, or rather likes cold mornings in a different way; James likes seasons, and change, and the excitement of autumn in the air, giant sweaters and fluffy scarves and pumpkin-spice coffee, the tangible coziness of the world.

Michael, of course, just likes James.

That one’s a given, though. Has been since the first day they’d ever met, when he’d looked down at the other body on that _Band of Brothers_ set, lying in a mud-filled ditch and being heroically stalwart, and those spectacular blue eyes’d caught his, through all the dirt and chaos.

James’d grinned. Tossed him a wink. And then instantly gone back to being in-character, so perfectly that Michael could only stand there in admiration and forget his own next line.

They’ve been friends ever since. Good friends, real friends, and of course James is friends with everyone he’s ever met, that’s a given, but Michael likes to think there’s something else there too, something closer, shared only between them. It’s probably futile, lonely imaginings on his part, wishful thinking with no legs to stand on, but when James sends him random text messages— _hey look I’m filming at this aquarium and this shark makes me think of you_ —the world gets a little brighter, on cloudy days. When James smiles at him, Michael, every time, ends up smiling along.

And if Michael occasionally has dreams about those eyes, that cheeky smile, well, they’re his dreams, and they’re private. No one else ever has to know.

He’s thinking about blue eyes and how lucky he is that they’ve ended up working together, fantastically, amazingly, together; he’s thinking about how grateful he is for that and how ungrateful he is for wishing for maybe just a little bit more; he’s thinking that James is going to be cold and need hot coffee and Michael’s arms around him, and because he’s thinking all of these things, he’s not paying attention to his own feet, or the treacherously slippery metal steps outside his trailer door.

The feet go out from under him. The world flips around, especially after he hits the ground and his head thumps onto wet grass and dirt.

After a few disoriented seconds, and the return of air to his lungs, he concludes that he’s not dead after all, and that he should probably get up, because everyone’ll be waiting for him on set, and he’s going to have to apologize to the costume department along the way.

At this point, several events happen in rapid succession: Michael tries to push himself to his feet, discovers bruises in places he didn’t know he had, attempts to unfold his right ankle, and gets knocked back onto the ground by white-hot pain.

“Okay,” he says, out loud. “Fuck.”

He’s fairly certain it’s not broken—he’s broken bones before, and he knows how that feels—but he’s definitely not walking anywhere for a while. Which also means, he realizes fuzzily, that he can’t call anyone, because his mobile phone’s patiently waiting back inside his trailer for him to be done for the day.

“Fuck,” he says again, and closes his eyes, and waits for the universe to stop spinning. It doesn’t seem to get the message, so he just lies there, in the grass, and aches everywhere for a while instead. It’s kind grass. Commiserative.

Eventually he hears footsteps, coming around the corner, happy and quick. He knows those footsteps. “Michael? Are you—Michael!”

James lands on his knees next to Michael’s head, both of them down there in the grass now; Michael opens his eyes and says “Hey” and James says “Oh god—Michael, what—what the fuck _happened_ , are you all right, please look at me, please say you’re all right,” and his voice actually sounds frightened, tremors beneath that solid Highland ground.

“I’m all right.” He doesn’t want James to be frightened. Not on his behalf. Not ever. So he tries that sitting-up maneuver one more time.

James says “Don’t even think about it—” and pushes him back down. “You could be seriously hurt, you could be—you fucking idiot, don’t _move_ ,” and then turns around and yells for the on-set paramedics.

“James,” Michael attempts, plaintively, “I’m _fine_.”

“That’s why you’re on the ground, then?”

“I fell down the steps, James. Not exactly a dramatic injury. Also, since when do you swear this much?” He pushes himself into a seated position, more or less successfully, as proof. James scowls, and promptly wraps arms around him for support, but lets him be vertical, at least.

James also mutters something that sounds like, “Since you’ve just taken ten years off my life, that’s fucking when,” and Michael’s got his mouth open to ask but the paramedics’re already descending, charge being led by Matthew and Kevin Bacon of all people.

James stays protectively at his side through all the poking and prodding, and glares every time professional fingers discover a new injury or explore a painful ankle. Michael finds himself alternately thankful for that, amused, and a little disconcerted by all the fierceness. More than anything, though, he finds himself not wanting James to ever let go.

They tell him he’s fine, just shaken and bruised, and the ankle’s only twisted, not broken or even respectably sprained, though it does hurt like hell. Matthew sighs; Michael apologizes, pathetically and profusely, and vows up and down and sideways that he’ll be ready to be back on camera in a couple of hours.

James glares at _him_ , this time. Michael tries to make an expression that says _well, you would do it, too_ , and it must somehow work, because James breathes out, and even smiles a little, ruefully: _of course_.

“Right,” Matthew says, “okay, then, you go rest, and keep weight off of that, and we’ll go film with the X-kids for a while—”

“We object to that nickname, you know.”

“I don’t know, I don’t mind if—”

“Speak for yourself, Lucas!”

“—and we’ll see how you’re doing this afternoon, all right? James, do you want to—ah. No. Okay, then. We’ll manage without you.” Matthew leans down and pats him on the shoulder, which makes Michael feel all of ten years old, and then wanders off, murmuring something about laboratory scenes and Nicholas and chemical reactions. This prompts a vaguely alarmed general exodus in his wake; James looks down at Michael. “How’re you?”

“Feeling incredibly stupid?”

“Don’t worry,” James says, “I’ve done worse. And you are okay.” That last sentence sounds like it’s for both their benefits, James convincing himself, saying so out loud. “If you want to get out of the dirt, we can go sit inside your trailer. I’ll help.”

“It’s grass. Not dirt. It’s friendlier.”

“…are you certain they checked you out properly, about having a concussion? Because that sounds like something I’d say.”

“I know.” Why he’d said it, actually. “Never mind. I can stand up.”

“No, you can’t. Not without help. Here—”

“I think you’re too short for that—”

“I am not! Is this better?”

It isn’t really, but they manage. Just having James there, arm securely around his waist, is better, in fact. But he can’t say that aloud.

James sets him down on the plushly concerned sofa, tucks cushions under his foot, plops a blanket atop him—“I’m fine, James, I’m not cold, I’m just clumsy!”—and then settles down on the thinly carpeted trailer floor, next to the couch, blue eyes looking into his.

“That can’t be comfortable.”

“It’s not _not_ comfortable. Besides, I can see you better from here. Your eyes look okay, at least. A little less…stunned. Feeling less stunned? Or just enjoying the painkillers?”

“Not sure they’re working yet. You don’t want a…couch pillow, or something?”

“No. You need them. Anything else? Tea? My grandmother always makes tea, when people’re upset. That and good whisky are her solutions for pretty much any situation, honestly.”

“I’m not—you don’t need to make tea, no—I’m not upset. And it’s not even a situation. Seriously. It’s just—”

“What?”

“Embarrassing,” Michael admits, only because he knows that James will somehow manage to understand.

The blue eyes dance, impish, but sympathetic beneath that: inviting currents warmed by the sun. “If it makes you feel any better, I _have_ done worse.”

“You have not. Have you?”

“Well.” James reaches over, runs his fingers through Michael’s hair, a gesture that could be awkward but isn’t, between them. The contact feels like safety. Like coming home. “You know that massive action scene in _Wanted_ , with all the rats? I mean—not that I’m assuming you’ve seen it, if you haven’t there were a lot of rats, in one scene, quite a few real ones because they couldn’t all be CG-added, and also some—”

“I’ve seen it, yes. You got hurt on that set. I know you did.” He’s truthfully only seen it once. He’d meant to watch it and then mock James for all that terrible action-hero glory, and had in fact been preparing a few good bits of commentary, and then he’d heard rumors about injured knees, James bleeding, James in the hospital, and suddenly all those brutal fight scenes’d been less than entertaining.

He flips the channel, when those scenes appear on his television screen.

“Who told you that? It wasn’t that bad.” But the hand in his hair pauses, momentarily.

“James…”

“All right, yes, I might be lying to you. I’ll tell you later. If you want. But all I was trying to say was, in terms of embarrassing stories, I think yours isn’t that awful. I mean, on the first take, I somehow managed to trip over my own feet—trying to avoid stepping on the rats—and land face-first on my own gun, and need stitches on my chin, so. You try explaining that story to the emergency room doctors sometime.”

“You didn’t really.”

“I did. Stitches and all. I remember just lying there on the ground feeling ridiculous, Angelina Jolie staring at me, Morgan Freeman asking whether I was okay, and I pretty much wanted to die. Also, the rats were eying me. Hungrily.”

“James,” Michael says, now fighting not to laugh, “rats don’t eat people.”

“These ones would’ve,” James says, perfectly deadpan, though the eyes’re twinkling, “they’d tasted blood, Michael, seriously, and they probably would’ve tried to carry me off and feed me to their tiny rat babies, except I still had guns, right, so I could defend myself, which is a good thing, did you know that rats can strip the flesh from a cow in two minutes?”

“That’s piranhas!” Michael manages, spluttering, and James lifts both eyebrows and inquires, “Yes, well, where d’you think the rats learned it?” and Michael gives up and gives in and laughs until his bruised ribs ache.

James observes this outcome quietly, a tiny smile playing around the corners of those lips. “Really better, now?”

“You’re amazing,” Michael says, “honestly, thank you, I love you,” and then stops talking, horrified.

James, after a second, blinks, and laughs, as well. Says, “Of course you do, I’m giving you humiliating stories for future interviews, how could you not love me, I’d love me too…” But his hand stops moving, again, on Michael’s head.

“You should probably try to rest, all right? Just…relax, for a while?”

Michael opens his mouth, glances at blue eyes—they’re determinedly not meeting his—and hates himself and his disloyal mouth, just a bit, and settles down meekly into the embrace of the couch. He wants to say so many things, then. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean it. I did mean it. I want you to say it back to me, and I know you won’t, you think I’m kidding, you think I’m your friend.

His ankle aches. His heart aches more.

But when he shuts his eyes, overwhelmed by all that collective aching, James breathes out, softly, and murmurs, “Good.” And the hand goes back to playing with his hair, smoothing, caressing, easing some of that hurt away.

He never does quite fall asleep. James is here, and the aspirin’s beginning to work, and the trailer’s very dim and quiet around them. It’s a secret kind of hush. Intimate. Only the two of them—and the sofa—in the world.

James must believe he’s asleep, though, because after a while that velvet-whisky voice says, low enough to be barely audible, “You scared the hell out of me, you know. When I—walking around the corner, seeing you on the ground, I couldn’t—I know it’s not serious. I know you’re all right. But please—please just be all right, okay?”

Michael almost opens his eyes, because the weariness, the wistfulness, in that voice is at once shockingly new and heartstoppingly familiar.

New because he’s never heard those notes in that Scottish melody ever before. Familiar because he knows exactly how that longing feels. He’s known for years.

In the pause, while he mentally flails for the appropriate course of action, James keeps talking. “I’d tell you, if you asked. The stories I don’t tell people, about me getting hurt, or any of the other embarrassing stories, or—anything you want to know, really, as long as I can make you laugh again. Because you make fun of my height. Because you turn all your characters into works of art, because you love _them_. Because you—you look at me sometimes like you think I _am_ amazing. And maybe that’s a stupid reason to fall in love with someone, or selfish, I don’t know, but no one’s ever really—you make me believe it. When I can make you laugh. And I—”

Michael _almost_ speaks up again. Bites his tongue at the last second. It’s probably a horrible deception, some sort of betrayal of their friendship, but he can’t interrupt at that moment, he _can’t_ , he has to know what James is about to say. Not a choice. A need.

James laughs, just a little. Self-deprecatingly. Half-amused. “Well. You said it, you know. I know you didn’t mean it. I can live with you not meaning it. I just can’t live without you, so you have to be careful, all right? Please. I love you.”

And Michael, who’s only human, who can’t listen to James saying those words to the silence and the creaking trailer walls and the sagging sofa cushions any longer, decides that now is just going to be the perfect time to pretend to be waking up, and opens his eyes.

The blue eyes, a few inches away, visibly jump, and widen, startled, guilty, dismayed. “I’m so sorry—did I wake you up? It’s fine, go back to sleep, no one needs us yet—”

This in fact isn’t true. Earlier, while he’d been drowsily wandering in and out of consciousness, he’d heard the light tap at the door, and James answering, quietly but forcefully, enough so that the person’d not returned.

“James,” he says.

“What is it? Do you need something? Anything?”

“I’m fine!—you really can’t be comfortable on the floor. Come up here.”

“It’s not that bad—”

“Please.”

“There’s not even room—”

“I can sit up. See?”

“Don’t—”

“Anyway, you’re a tiny person. There’s room. Come here.” James’d mentioned not minding, when Michael teased him about their respective sizes. And Michael’s not above exploiting that fact.

James sighs. Gets up from the floor, settles down in the corner of the sofa, puts an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “At least lean on me.”

“Okay.” More than. The sofa, silently, approves as well.

He contemplates courses of action for a while. Hears James’s confession, those particular choices of phrase, again, in memory. He’s going to have to make this very clear, he realizes. Incontrovertible. Nothing that James can talk himself out of believing, or wave away as a projection of distress or painkillers. Convincing, repeatedly so if necessary.

Which isn’t actually going to be a hardship. “James?”

“Are you sure you’re not—”

“Very sure. You were telling me your embarrassing story. You said you needed stitches. I never knew that.”

“Oh…you remember that? Not too many. That one hardly even left a scar. You can’t see it, can you?” James tips his head to the side, obviously trying to examine his own chin; Michael nearly laughs, because James can always make him want to laugh, but he has plans, so instead he just puts a hand up and touches James’s face and tugs him a bit closer.

“Where?”

“I…um…” James licks his lips. Swallows. Moves his own hand, a bit belatedly. “Here?”

“Hmm. No, I can’t tell. Though…” He lets fingertips trace their way over James’s skin, lifting that chin, following nutmeg-and-sunshine freckles up along the curve of one cheek. No longer even pretending to look. Not really.

James is breathing a bit faster, now. And those eyes are very wide.

“You kind of smell like cinnamon,” Michael tells him, from inches away, and James blinks, and searches for words. “You…that…it’s, um. My lip balm.”

“…seriously?”

“My sister bought it for me,” James whispers, “as a joke, because I keep losing mine, but then I did lose mine, this morning, so I had to use it—”

“James?”

“Yes?”

“I like cinnamon.”

“You—” And whatever protest might’ve been forthcoming ends up banished, crushed into nonexistence by Michael’s lips against his, licking the words out of his mouth, tasting each breath, each astounded small gasp; by the moment when James stops thinking and rationalizing and worrying and just kisses him back, swept up in the tidal wave, the swell and burst and giddy crash of joy.

James parts his lips, for Michael’s exploring tongue. He’s a generous kisser, accepting everything Michael asks of him, giving himself wholeheartedly. And, because he’s James, a little playfully: that tongue slips out to meet his, too, and teeth nip cheerfully at his bottom lip, before Michael growls something inarticulate and possessive and pulls him in more deeply, and James gasps and surrenders.

After a few eternities, Michael’s bruises start protesting the inconvenient position, and he lets go, with reluctance. Only long enough to sit up properly, he thinks, but in the hiatus James clearly regains the ability to process events, and to disbelieve. Damn.

“Michael—you—that—oh, god, I’m so sorry, this isn’t you, this is you on painkillers and hurt and I’m—I swear I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t—”

“You aren’t taking advantage of me, James.” He picks up both anxious hands, before James can snatch them away. “Completely sober. I swear. I want to kiss you. Understand?”

“No!”

“James—” He tugs on the hands. James, off-balance mentally and physically, ends up back in his arms. Excellent, Michael thinks brightly, and then kisses him again. With conviction.

“But,” James gets out, and Michael shakes his head, and then starts kissing the pale skin of that throat, lips and pressure and affirmation, and all the talking turns into little moans, instead.

He does pause, briefly, just to look: James here, in his arms, half in his lap by now, hair standing up every direction, cheeks flushed, lips red and wet and thoroughly kissed, tropical-ocean eyes dark and slightly dazed. Spectacular.

“James,” he says, “I did tell you I love you. And, no, I didn’t mean to say it. But I did mean it. I do mean it. I want to kiss you, I want to hear all your stories, I want you next to me any time I get hurt. I want you. I love you.”

“Michael,” James says right back, a little shakily, but sincere, “I love you too.”

“Oh thank god,” Michael says, and this time James is the one who kisses him, brilliant and sparkling and full of promises that taste like cinnamon.

This blissful state of affairs lasts until one or both of them makes an unconsidered move, and Michael yelps in actual pain, because love is fantastic but it apparently can’t cure twisted ankles, and James sits up, looking horrified. “I’m sorry—”

“Stop that. Not your fault. Anyway, I did say I wanted you next to me, to have you to lean on, when I need that. So…”

“So you always can.” The eyes lighten, again, with the agreement.

Michael breathes in, not from pain, and makes his own offering. “James…you know you can lean on me, too. Always.”

James gazes at him, head tilted to one side, for a second. Thinking. Michael’s afraid to exhale.

And then James says, decisively, “You know, I think I believe you.” And kisses him, inarguably happy punctuation, on the nose.

“ _…really_ amazing.”

“Oh, you have no idea. Just wait until you can stand up again. Though…I might prefer you lying down. That way I can be on top of you.”

Michael chokes on air, coughs, flounders, gets out, “Please?” and James grins, wickedly merry. “Not until at least tomorrow. When you’re not in pain.”

“I’m _completely_ fine.”

“I said tomorrow,” James says, still grinning, “and you’re going to listen, and if you behave, well…I did say I’d like you lying down. I meant in my bed. Just so you know.”

“I love you. And that’s just unfair. And please yes.”

“I know,” James says, “and I promise to make it up to you—possibly like _this_ —”

“Oh _god_ yes.”

“—and I love you, too.”


End file.
